A third stubbornly refuses to call an almond an “ammind” like, say, a normal Chicoan would do.

And coming full circle, our fourth is also a high school student — but she’s working on graduating early while grappling with a random encounter that left the words “marry the love of your life” echoing in her ears for months on end.

They are, respectively, Miles Strelecki, Mary Brashears, Lindy Hoppough and Cassie Tabler, and they are our 2019 North State Voices columnists.

The series, an annual feature of this newspaper for the past 14 years, brings together four writers from Butte and Glenn counties to share their perspectives on every topic imaginable for an entire year. Each “Voice” writes one column every four weeks, with one appearing every Thursday on the Opinion page.

We selected these writers from a pool of applicants in December. The competition always draws a range of diverse entries, and the decisions are never easy. Without giving away too many surprises, we’re confident the four we’ve chosen will do a great job of continuing the column’s long history of unique viewpoints.

You’ve seen one example already. The series began last Thursday with a column by Hoppough, who wrote of her experience as a “rural innocent” in the Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco in 1978, when she was 19. Her insistence on saying “all-mund” shows a skepticism that is evident in her stories, along with a self-deprecating sense of humor. A creative director at a consulting firm, she says the biggest surprise to emerge from her writing will be how often she mentions her father.

This Thursday, you’ll meet Tabler, a 17-year-old resident of Chico who has an extreme passion for writing and all things nature. She describes herself as “unique in a plethora of ways,” with an infectious personality that you’ll feel through her writing.

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Here’s a sneak preview of her column for tomorrow, where she writes about a random encounter with a woman in Bidwell Park who urged her to “marry the love of your life”:

“It was as if she had wanted me to marry the love of my life just as much as I wanted too. Now instead of listening to my music and jumping in the stream as I had planned, I was going down a rabbit hole of thoughts … Did she see herself in me? Did she let her true love be the one that got away? What made her come up to me of all people?”

Next up will be Miles Strelecki, a 16-year-old sophomore at Chico High School. He entered the North State Voices competition after his teacher recommended it to the class. He’s passionate about education and technology, which is what he spends most of his time with. So, not surprisingly, school, growing up and technology will be subjects of his columns.

Finally, we have Mary Brashears, who is 84 years young and has made Chico her home for 63 years. She’s a retired grandmother of 16, and has taught a class on “Writing Your Slice of Life” and taken genealogy classes at a local learning-in-retirement group. She says she has “a passion for people, and I believe everyone has a story.”

We believe everyone has a story too, and that’s why we’re always on the lookout for diverse viewpoints for our Opinion page. Make sure to look for North State Voices here every Thursday as these four local writers share some stories of their own.